


Back to the Drawing Board

by MeghanAnna



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 02:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10957668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeghanAnna/pseuds/MeghanAnna
Summary: Clarke has been drawing the same face for as long as she can remember. As she ages, the face ages, looking more and more real until she's twenty-three and the person she draws looks so real he could be standing right in front of her.





	Back to the Drawing Board

Clarke is used to waking up in the middle of the night with a strong urge to break out her charcoal pencils. She’s used to sketching the same face every other month since she first knew how to hold a pencil. Each year—each drawing—the face becomes less abstract and more solid. 

It’s not only her skills that are getting better, but the image in her head grows clearer. When she was younger, she was never sure if it was a boy or a girl that she was sketching. She knew they had freckles and unruly hair that was never the same length twice. But with age and time, it became clear that the face is male, it’s strong, and it’s more attractive than most men she’s seen in real life. 

She doesn’t know who he is or what he does or where lives. But she does know—or, at least, suspect—that he’s her soulmate. 

Soulmates aren’t guaranteed in life, but there are certain people who find their soulmates in various ways. Clarke thinks that the urge to sketch this one particular face is her way. The face ages along with her, maybe a little older, but at the same pace. 

And when she is twenty-three years old, she wakes up and the face she sketches is as clear as day. Her hands move rapidly, creating the lines of his face with unmatched precision—not a single stray line, not a hair out of place, not a freckle forgotten. He’s wearing glasses and smirking ever so slightly. It’s the realest he’s ever looked—like he’s standing right in front of her. And when she stops and scoots her chair away from the table, she finally breathes again. And she can’t look away.

“Who is that?”

Clarke finally turns her head to find Raven leaning over her shoulder, studying her drawing. She was so lost in it that she never even heard Raven come down the hallway. “I don’t know,” she admits. Raven just hums and starts up a pot of coffee. 

She and Raven have been friends for two years. They ended up living together when they realized Raven’s live-in boyfriend was also dating Clarke. It wasn’t an easy transition from jilted ex-lovers to friends, but they’ve reached the point where they’re friends first and Finn is just a distant memory. 

However, Clarke hasn’t told Raven, or anyone—except for Wells—about her drawings. And she only told him because he caught her drawing the face when she first started, when they were just little kids. 

“I’ve been drawing this same face since I was, like, four,” she explains and Raven turns slowly, like she’s starting to understand what’s going on. “This is the best I’ve ever done. He looks… real.”

“What do you think it means?” Raven asks her carefully and Clarke is having a hard time reading her tone.

The two of them have never talked about soulmates. She always just assumed it was because Raven didn’t have one. Or that Raven assumed the same about her. Neither of them have any visual soul marks on their bodies, so it’s an easy assumption to make. And because soulmates aren’t guaranteed—or even completely understood—Clarke doesn’t share what she believes is her soulmate connection with anyone. 

“I think it could mean a lot,” she finally says and they both laugh because the thought seems so unbelievable.  _ Soulmates _ . Raven slides into the seat across the table from her and touches the top of Clarke’s sketchbook. Clarke pushes it toward her just enough to let her know she can look through it. 

The book isn’t just that same face over and over. There are some other sketches thrown in there, too. But she’s been so busy with school and work that hasn’t had much time for her own art and the book is full of sketches she’s done over the past two years. The face takes up more than half of the filled pages, though. 

Raven starts at the beginning and stops to inspect each iteration of Clarke’s could-be soulmate. She ignores the beeping of the coffee machine, so Clarke gets up and pours them both a cup while Raven keeps flipping through the pages. When Clarke sits back down, Raven is looking at the face Clarke drew three months ago. The differences between that and the one she finished are even starker than Clarke originally thought.

“Wow,” Raven says, pushing the book across the table and trading it for her coffee cup. “He’s hot.”

“He is, right?” 

“Really hot,” Raven promises and Clarke smiles into her coffee cup as she takes a sip. “I hope you get to meet him.”

“I never thought I would,” she says quietly and Raven nods, almost like she understands. “Do you have one? We’ve never talked about it and I know it’s rude to ask, but—“

“Nope,” Raven answers, cutting off Clarke’s rambling. “Neither did Finn, so I kind of always thought he was mine. Like we were two leftover people that weren’t bound by fate to anyone else. I thought we got to choose who we loved. I thought we chose each other.” 

Clarke feels guilty every single time the subject of Finn comes up, but never more than this moment.  _ She  _ slept with and _ fell in love with _ the one person Raven chose to love. The only one she’s ever chosen. “I’m sorry,” she says for the thousandth time and she means it. She always means it. 

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. And it clearly wasn’t meant to be. We were young and I was naïve. You didn’t do anything wrong. You just fell in love.”

Clarke smiles tightly and nods, closing the book in front of her. “I’ve got to get to work.”

“Did you even sleep?” Raven asks her and Clarke laughs until it turns into a yawn. “So, no?”

“Not really, but if I don’t serve coffee, who will?”

“Octavia? Monty? Literally anyone else you work with?” Raven asks, but Clarke just shrugs. She needs the money. She can sleep later. “Okay. But do you mind if I come with you? I can’t work here anymore. I get too distracted by the internet and TV.”

“The café has wifi, you know,” Clarke reminds her, but Raven just narrows her eyes, waiting for an answer. “But of course you can.”

\--

The café is quiet, like it always is, because it’s a Thursday in July in a pretty small college town, but Clarke keeps herself busy. She brought her sketchbook with her and starts  _ another  _ drawing of the same face. She’s never done two so close together, but something told her to bring the book and a pencil. And because she is desperate to know more about this face and what it could mean, she listens to that impulse.

Raven is the only constant in the café, so it’s easy—and forgivable—for Clarke to get lost in this new drawing. She does have to stop every so often when she hears the bell above the door jingle, but not for longer than a drink and a pastry order. It’s an easy day, work wise, but Clarke’s mind is running nonstop. 

She’s able to put the pencil down when she’s got a rough outline of his face done because the door swings open with a flourish. “You’re not working today,” she accuses Octavia and she sighs dramatically. “What’s wrong?”

“My brother is meeting me here.” She says it like she’s waiting for the devil himself to walk through the door. 

“I didn’t even know you had a brother,” Raven says pointedly. Clarke didn’t know either, but it’s not a surprise. She and Octavia aren’t all that close. They had a few classes together in school and work together, but that’s the extent of their relationship. Octavia’s not a sharer. There’s no reason either Clarke or Raven would have known she has a brother. 

“That’s because we’re not really close anymore. He always acted more like a dad than an older brother and I finally couldn’t take it anymore once high school came around,” Octavia admits. She almost looks regretful, but not quite. “This is the first summer since I started college that I’m not going home, so he asked if he could come visit for a long weekend.”

“And you said yes.”

“I kinda miss him,” she shrugs before sitting at a table alone, facing the door. “He’s meeting me here so he can see where I work.” 

While Raven rolls her eyes and goes back to her computer, Clarke leans over her sketchbook, but turns back the page to look at the drawing she finished this morning. She studies the face again and feels her smile growing ever so slightly. How can someone she doesn’t even know—who might not even exist—make her  _ this  _ happy? How does she know that she’d fall for him if ever given the chance to meet him? 

“This is crazy,” she says, mostly to herself, just as the door opens. “It doesn’t make any— holy  _ shit _ .”

Raven looks up at that and finds Clarke staring at whoever just walked through the door. Clarke can’t believe it. 

“Holy shit,” Raven echoes and Clarke finally looks away to make sure Raven is seeing exactly what she is. She definitely is. “Clarke…”

“I know,” she says, but she can’t look back toward the door. Not even when Monty comes in whistling. Not even when  _ Octavia’s brother _ is standing right in front of her, ignoring his sister almost completely. She just keeps her eyes trained on Raven. She knows Raven. Raven makes all the sense in the world. What’s waiting for her when she turns her head makes  _ no _ sense. 

“Clarke.” Raven says it more forcefully now, eyeing the man standing at the counter. Clarke can hear Monty putting on his apron and she feels him trying to read the situation.

“Can you say that again?” Octavia’s brother asks and Octavia lets out girlish laugh—unlike anything Clarke has ever heard come out of her. 

“Clarke!” Raven says it again, standing up to really make her point. And Clarke knows she’s right. She knows she should look at him. He asked her a question. Not one she completely understands, but still. She’s being rude. 

“Say what?” Clarke asks, finally looking at him again. Up close he’s even more handsome than when she saw him walk through the door. Way more beautiful than he appears her sketchbook. 

Her  _ soulmate _ ?

“Say what you said when I walked inside,” he begs her. “Please.”

“Okay,” Clarke says, but she’s not really sure why he wants to hear it. “I was going to say that it doesn’t make any sense, but then I, um, I saw you.”

He doesn’t look pleased. In fact, he almost looks annoyed with her. But when his eyes fall to the notebook on the counter, he goes pale and reaches back for Octavia. 

“That’s  _ you _ ,” she says, reaching for the book almost on instinct, but Clarke closes it quickly and pulls it back against her chest. “You don’t know my brother, but that’s his face. It’s  _ you _ .”

“Monty, can you cover for me while I take a break?” Clarke asks. She can’t stand there, looking at that face while Octavia says monumental things like that while she’s wearing her stupid apron.

“Yeah…”

“Thanks.” Clarke takes off her apron and tosses it under the counter before walking around to the dining room. Raven is watching her closely, like she’s ready to pounce at any moment if needed. But the closer Clarke gets to this person, the more at ease she feels. Even if none of it makes sense. 

“You said, ‘It doesn’t make any— holy shit,’” he tells her and she nods. Then he starts unbuttoning his shirt, never taking his eyes off of her, and Clarke has even less of an idea of what’s happening. 

“Jeez, Bellamy, at least warn the girl,” Octavia says with a sigh and a shake of her head. 

_ Bellamy _ . Clarke likes the sound of that. She’d repeat it out loud just to see how it feels if he wasn’t  _ taking his shirt off  _ in the middle of a café. 

He only pulls one arm down once it’s unbuttoned and just enough for her to see something written on his bicep. A tattoo. 

A tattoo that says, “ _ It doesn’t make any— holy shit. _ ” 

“So, it is what I thought,” she says, reaching to trace the tattoo before she remembers that she doesn’t even know this person. Soulmate or not, she can’t just grope his arm. 

“Looks that way,” he says and when she looks back at his face, he’s smirking just slightly—like she’d drawn on his face that morning. His glasses are a little askew—like she’d drawn that morning—and it’s all very charming. 

“I’m really sorry you have to live with that stupid half sentence and compulsory curse word on your arm for the rest of your life,” she tells him because she really doesn’t know what else to say. And when he laughs, she smiles back at him like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

“I’m Bellamy.” He holds his hand out for her to shake and when she grabs it, she swears there’s an electric current running through her whole body. 

“I’m Clarke.” She’s still holding his hand—no longer shaking it, just…  _ holding  _ it. But he doesn’t let go either. 

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Octavia says and for the first time in minutes, Clarke remembers there are other people watching them. “I can’t believe it’s  _ Clarke _ .” That girlish giggle erupts from her again and Clarke realizes that she’s happy. Hell, she’s delighted. 

And Bellamy looks pretty delighted, too.

\--

Eventually, Clarke had to get back to work and Octavia and Bellamy needed to leave to café. In the hours that have passed, she’s been finishing up the sketch she’d started just before she met him. Her  _ soulmate _ . 

Monty and Raven couldn’t stop freaking out. They didn’t know of anyone else at school who’d found their soulmates. They definitely weren’t there to witness it. Clarke still wasn’t quite able to form a coherent sentence herself, so she let them go on and on until Raven eventually left. But, then she let Monty go on and on by himself. 

He has a soulmate and the mark to prove it, but he’s never met them. He knows nothing about them. Clarke was lucky in that way. This whole time she knew what he looked like. She’d basically watched him grow up in her sketchbooks. 

She didn’t learn much before he had to leave to meet Octavia’s boyfriend for lunch, but she now knew he was twenty-eight. He was finishing up his own degree to become a teacher. And he had a voice so deep she felt it almost more than she heard it. 

“So, are you going to meet up with Bellamy before he leaves?” Monty asks her as she’s getting ready to leave at the end of her shift.

“You heard our entire conversation. You know as much as I do.”

“Well, then, I can’t believe you didn’t make any plans.”

She honestly can’t believe it either. She’s been waiting to meet him since she first started drawing his face, nineteen years ago. They should have made some kind of plan, even if it included Octavia and Lincoln. Anything would be better than the nothing they came up with.

When she leaves the café, she’s tempted to just text Octavia and ask for Bellamy’s number, but when she turns the corner toward her apartment, she sees him walking toward her. 

“I was just about to text your sister,” she tells him and he smiles, almost shyly. “This is better.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” he admits and she nods. She’s never met her soulmate before either. She has no idea how it works. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to live our lives now, knowing what we know. I never really planned to meet you. So many people live without their soulmates, you know? I always just figured I would be one of them.”

“I’m glad you’re not,” she says and he smiles again before looking down at the ground. “I mean, I always knew you were hot, but it’s way better in real life.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know what you looked like, but I always liked that you weren’t afraid to swear,” he says with a laugh. “And it doesn’t hurt at all that you ended up being hot either.”

Clarke laughs and takes a small step closer to him. It’s almost like she can’t help it.  “Shouldn’t you be with your sister or something?” 

“She’s happy that I met you,” he admits. “She thinks it’ll get me off of her back, so I promise she doesn’t mind that I’m here.”

“So, then will she mind if you come to my place and have dinner? Because I’m starving.”

“Then we should go to your place,” he says and she leads him toward her apartment. After just a few steps, she feels his hand envelope hers and she squeezes it just to make sure it’s all really happening. 

And it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!
> 
> Come find me on [Tumblr](http://bellamyfrecklefaceblake.tumblr.com)!


End file.
